Matiu/Somes Island

Wellington Harbour was discovered about 1,000 years ago by the semi-legendary Polynesian explorer Kupe. He had two daughters and a son. The son was Tara and he settled in the area naming the harbour Te Whanganui a Tara (the great harbour of Tara).
There are two islands in the Te Whanganui – Matiu and Makoro named after the daughters. When Europeans arrived they bestowed their own names on these features. Port Nicholson, Somes and Ward respectively. The old names are making something of a renaissance and we are in the hybrid stage of referring to where we went today as Matiu/Somes.

In the past the island has been a Maori settlement, heavily fortified pa site; in European times a quarantine station for humans and animals and during both world wars it was used as an internment camp. Nowadays it is administered by DoC as a reserve

The journey by ferry takes 20 minutes from the centre of Wellington.
It has been a glorious weekend and today was sunny and warm. This is the view looking north to Petone and the Western Hutt hills

and south west across to Kaukau and Wellington

Lunch was taken amidst second world war gun emplacements

which (along with most of the southern part of the island) has been taken over by gulls for nesting

(sorry this is slightly out of focus)

We did see lots of kakariki, some robins, several skinks and geckoes, some weta in their hotel, but sadly no tuatara apart from Andy who saw one.

I don’t have any photos of these but here is an ancient fossil attempting to be young and trendy

On our return to Wellington some of us went to the annual model train exhibition. There were some impressive layouts including this Hornby O gauge 3 rail setup

and a lovely New Zealand bush railway in N or something fairly small